Eliezer Engerman

are we destined to destroy ourselves before first contact?
i am sure that we are not the only beings in the vast expanse of the universe, 
although i doubt we’ll ever cross the stars to meet parallel worlds.
i doubt that an intelligent species will ever get to the point of interstellar travel before we eviscerate any evidence of our existence.  

we are our own clockmaker, no higher designer to tweak our gears
or to grease our belts with gentle hands
or to make sure we’re ticking perfectly in time.
instead we shove wrenches in our own fucked up amalgamations of traits that allowed early humans to survive.

there’s a graph of the existence of intelligent life on earth
—the x axis is time passed, in eons
and the y axis tracks the rise and fall of civilizations.
we drag ourselves, hands and knees towards obliteration, oblivion, gone-ness
destined to destroy ourselves before first  contact.